


When She Broke Your Throne

by Artemis1000



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Hate Sex, Love/Hate, Post-Solo: A Star Wars Story, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-07 18:24:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15225231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: Two times Qi’ra chose Crimson Dawn over Enfys and the third time that was the charm - kind of. But not really. It's complicated.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this fic and happy exchanging!

Enfys’s eyes were hard and unmoving as she looked right into the barrel of Qi’ra’s blaster.

Her heart pounded, her heartbeat echoed deafeningly loud in her ears, and quietly to herself, she marveled that she even felt hurt.

“I should have seen this coming,” she said, teeth clenched but her tone of voice almost normal. Almost. Pretenses were harder once you had lost your helmet and voice synthesizer.

Qi’ra’s face was as unmoving as her own, a perfect porcelain doll’s face, painted and emotionless and devoid of all these pesky human weaknesses Qi’ra had long since rid herself off. “You should have,” she said.

They stood in the middle of a cantina that had turned into a battlefield as soon as the Cloud-Riders arrived to take out the gathering of Crimson Dawn leaders, coming together to attack a rival syndicate’s presence on this world and claim supremacy amongst the system’s criminal underworld. Under better circumstances they would have never even met, Enfys’s people would have planted the explosives and she would have watched it all blow up from a safe distance, never having to face Qi’ra again or experience the weakness she felt every time they met.

Of course, no battle plan ever survived the first encounter with the enemy. Everybody knew that. Enfys really should have seen it coming.

A neat, clean assassination had turned into a shoot-out and now her people were dead or run off, and Qi’ra people were the same, though more of hers had simply abandoned their leader once it was a choice between saving her or themselves.

Enfys took a certain grim satisfaction in knowing how much the loss of control would wound Qi’ra.

There was something almost like pity on Qi’ra’s face now as she delicately stepped over a corpse, her blaster never wavering. “We knew you were coming.”

Enfys felt her belly tighten. No.

A moment passed before she denied it aloud this time. “No.” She shook her head sharply. “No. It can’t. You…”

The only way they could have known was if someone had told. She frantically ran through the list of her lieutenants. Only a select few had known of their plan well enough in advance for the trap to be turned against them. It was a short list, three names, all of them people who had served with Enfys for as long as she could remember, all of them already lieutenants under her mother’s leadership.

Qi’ra looked beautiful with that pitying smile on her lips. Enfys’s fist itched with the urge to punch her and bleed it from her perfect face.

“No,” she said again, for all that the denial was worth now.

“Don’t hold it against him,” Qi’ra said, still with so much grating pity. “Maul knows how to sniff out the thing people fear or want most in the galaxy and use it against them.”

Enfys looked at her and wondered aloud, “Which one was it for you?”

Qi’ra blaster touched her forehead. The barrel felt pleasantly cool against her battle-flushed skin and Enfys shivered, but she didn’t flinch.

Enfys didn’t look away either. “You’ll make a right proper mess at this distance.”

“I know.”

They stood face to face, still holding the other’s gaze – it was a contest of wills, no doubt about it, and Enfys Nest had no intention to lose another battle tonight.

Two years now. Two years since the coaxium heist that had first seen them meet face to face, that had catapulted Qi’ra from Dryden Vos’s lieutenant to leading the Crimson Dawn in Maul’s name. Two years of trying to outwit and outdo another, two years of battles and battles of wits and schemes and two years in which Qi’ra’s cold, perfect smile turned from a loathed sight to the last thing Enfys thought of before she fell asleep and the first thing she thought of when she awoke.

Two years since Qi’ra’s eyes had started to linger longer on her every time they met, without her aim ever becoming any less true. Of course, neither had Enfys’s.

“I loathe you,” she said, and she meant it.

“I loathe you, too,” Qi’ra echoed. There was a single strand of hair out of place, falling into her eye in a way that was so artfully cliché that Enfys would have thought it to be on purpose if it didn’t strike her as wholly out-of-character for Qi’ra to permit anything to be out of place, even if it was artfully arranged to be so.

Finally, Enfys lowered her gaze. “It’s not too late,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if she believed it. Maybe it had always been too late.

“What?” Qi’ra’s voice was harsher now, a harshness she rarely permitted herself even with her enemies. She didn’t like to appear ruffled. “You expect me to put down my blaster and walk away from everything?”

Enfys opened her mouth to tell her that yes, she did. And Qi’ra could. Maybe. But when she finally opened her mouth, the lie wouldn’t pass her lips. “You’re better than this,” she said instead, even as her throat felt tight and she wondered, was she really? After everything?

Qi’ra averted her eyes first. She let her gaze wander over the wrecked cantina, overturned tables and broken chairs and blaster burns littering the walls, over corpses scattered amidst the chaos. “No,” she said quietly, her voice oddly dull, “I’m not. I’m really not.”

She had always known the truth, deep down. It still hurt to hear it.

Two years of dreaming of these lips welled up in Enfys in one wave of bitterness. It was almost enough to choke her. “I guess not,” she snapped. “Because you’re a coward!”

And then she was moving, smacking the blaster out of Qi’ra’s hand – it skittered under an upturned table well outside both their reach – and trying to pin her on the floor.

Qi’ra snapped from melancholy to fight within the blink of an eye, fighting back with the same deadly grace which she always displayed in doing her work.

They grappled, Qi’ra’s calculated grace mismatched against Enfys’s raw ferocity and yet they had fought this dance often enough to know the other’s moves well, to find some kind of balance between their clashing styles. Neither of them held anything back, soon resorting to vibroblades for an angrier, more personal battle than blasters could ever provide.

The battle took them from the main room towards one of the back rooms of the cantina, where a sabacc table had been hastily abandoned; abandoned credits and cards and glasses alike scattered all over the floor when the table got overturned.

Enfys hissed when Qi’ra’s blade slashed her left shoulder, then growled with furious triumph when Qi’ra’s head smacked back into the edge of the tabletop with a painful thud.

Qi’ra recovered fast, while her shoulder wound still slowed Enfys down, and before she knew it Enfys found herself on the floor, once more pinned by a deadly weapon aimed at her.

The odd glowing-red vibroblade Qi’ra used hummed against her throat, not quite cutting, just so very, very close to it.

Qi’ra no longer looked so perfect or poised, nor untouchable, Enfys noted with satisfaction… and yet here they were, once more at a standstill. She was really growing quite tired of these standstills.

Enfys fought against the dizziness and the pain to hold her gaze. “Do it!” she snapped, “do it already!” She bared her teeth at her. “Or don’t you dare? Are you a coward, after all? Two years and you still can’t do it?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t.” Qi’ra let her blade slip, just a warning nick against Enfys’s throat.

Enfys felt hysterical laughter bubble up. She didn’t fight against it. Every single bone in her body ached, and yet she felt like laughing. Maybe like crying, too, but her eyes weren’t stinging yet so she had to be alright. “But you can’t do it.”

“You’re one to talk,” Qi’ra scoffed and then the heat of the vibroblade was gone from her throat and there was the heat of Qi’ra’s lips against her own.

Enfys parted her lips for her, they met more with teeth than tongues, mauling another in a duel that continued their earlier battle. She dug her fingers into Qi’ra’s no-longer-perfect hair and tore it from the remains of its bun and Qi’ra yanked her up and pressed herself against her as if she could crawl under her skin.

Skin, skin, skin, she wanted to touch Qi’ra’s skin, to feel her, taste her, to finally know everything that she had only fantasized about before.

Qi’ra’s blouse went first, Enfys tearing it open and burying her face between perfect breasts, peppering them with bites and kisses and everything in-between as fury bubbled through her and mingled with lust. Qi’ra’s nails dug into the back of her neck deep enough to hurt when Enfys bit a hardened nipple. She growled her pleasure and bit down harder.

Her own clothes would be more of a challenge, too many layers, too much complicated armor. She had to extricate herself from Qi’ra for it and as she did so, her eyes fell on the devastated battlefield around them again. Some sense returned to her just as she was about to open the fastenings of her chest armor.

“Not here,” she said, feeling sickened at the sight, the reminder what Qi’ra had cost her, what betrayal to everything she was _this_ was. She shook her head firmly, as if that could shake loose all the pictures now forever branded into her memory. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t.”

“Alright,” Qi’ra said. Her fingers curled around Enfys’s wrist and pulled her away, to a staircase at the back of the cantina and then up a rickety staircase.

The entire building was deserted, the two of them the only living souls inside left. It had been cleared out of everyone but the Crimson Dawn’s own before their gathering.

Enfys dropped the armor in the hallway upstairs.

Qi’ra lost her skirt as they crossed the threshold to a small guest room with an even smaller bed. Enfys kind of doubted it would hold the weight of both of them.

Enfys pinned Qi’ra to the wall instead. There was no hesitation as her hand found its way right between Qi’ra’s legs, fingers running along her folds until they found the source of her slick. She slipped a finger into her cunt up to the first knuckle and Qi’ra mewled, head pressed back against the wall, teeth digging into her bottom lip. Enfys thrust her finger in all the way as her thumb found her clit.

Qi’ra shivered against her. This time, her nails dug into the bare, unprotected skin of her back. She pressed first kisses, then bitemarks onto the side of Enfys’s neck and then finally she surrendered herself to pleasure, permitted her hips to roll and press against Enfys’s fingers in an unspoken plea for more and harder and _more_.

Enfys could feel each shudder, every clench of her muscles as she came close, so very close, only for Enfys’s fingers to slow before she could reach her peak. She had never felt quite so powerful and never felt so weak, and Qi’ra had barely even touched her yet.

As if Qi’ra had heard her thoughts, her hands moved from Enfys’s back to explore her body, nails scraping over her exposed nipples, mapping the scars on her belly and the soft skin on the inside of her thighs. Enfys’s fingers inside her slowed again as she lost herself in Qi’ra’s methodic exploration of her body.

Her own goal of seeing Qi’ra come undone under her hands as quickly as possible forgotten, they moved to the bed in wordless understanding and continued their exploration at a slower pace.

There was something almost gentle about the way that Qi’ra methodically explored scars she had given Enfys, or in the way in which she caressed the edge of the shoulder wound Enfys had suffered during their scuffle downstairs. It still hurt of course but Enfys was used to pain. It wasn’t physical pain she feared and sought to avoid.

Qi’ra’s perfect smile drove her to moans against the lips of her cunt. She was most definitely smiling as she slipped her tongue into Enfys and Enfys balled her hands into fists around the bedsheets, cursing and pleading and growling. And Qi’ra? She was humming in smug contentment as she licked her right to the edge – and unlike Enfys before, she kept going.

Qi’ra had never hesitated to take what she wanted.

 

When Enfys awoke, she immediately knew where she was, there was no doubt or confusion in her mind what had happened.

She knew exactly what she had done.

And she didn’t even have to open her eyes to know that she was alone.

She checked on her wound and gathered her armor as she went, and walked downstairs to find the cantina still eerily deserted – and completely empty, every sign of last night’s battle gone.

There wasn’t even a single bloodstain to be found, just a large room devoid of furniture, the only sign that anything was amiss the blaster damage on the walls.

Her helmet and her weapon had been propped up on the bar. She slipped on the helmet and told herself that she felt like herself again, and not the least bit hurt.

Later, she would learn that Qi’ra’s troops had used Enfys’s absence and the confusion of her fighters to go through with the attack on their rivals. Under different circumstances, it wouldn’t have made much difference to the Cloud-Riders if this or that syndicate won the day but this victory consolidated Crimson Dawn’s stranglehold, which would make them all that harder to fight.

Later still, she would tell herself it had been nothing but a clever distraction – and try not to remember that Qi’ra could have simply pulled the trigger, no need for clever distractions at all.


	2. Chapter 2

“Here we are again.”

There was, as usual, a perfect mild smile painted on Qi’ra’s lips.

Enfys ripped off her helmet with more force than was strictly necessary and hugged it against her chest.

They stood face to face again and that it wasn’t a cantina made little difference. The sun burned down onto the impoverished mining colony they had come to do battle over – Crimson Dawn seeking to seize control, Cloud-Riders coming to thwart them. Now here they stood at a standstill again, their fighters neatly lined up in a face-off on the main plaza of the colony, the leaders like spear points.

“Brings back memories, doesn’t it?” Enfys added, looking around. There was no crashed Millennium Falcon, there wasn’t even any sand, but it was close enough.

She found herself just childishly relieved that Qi’ra and her weren’t alone this time. Many months had passed since _that_ night and _that_ cantina but she still wasn’t sure if she wanted to trust her own good judgment.

Qi’ra’s smile didn’t waver. “It does.”

Enfys averted her eyes and told herself that she didn’t yearn to let her gaze linger on Qi’ra lips. She took a step towards her – two groups of fighters shifted uneasily, both ready to throw themselves into battle at the first hint of violence, and Enfys made herself stop. There was still a gulf between Qi’ra and her but at least they were close enough now to comfortably converse. It didn’t feel much less like a face-off for a duel.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” she said.

Qi’ra smile tightened the smallest notch. “It was a great loss to all of us.”

“You’re the leader now, nobody above you anymore,” Enfys said, and within the safety of her own mind she added, _was it worth it?_ Even if they had been alone, she didn’t think she would have had the courage to voice her question. She was pretty sure she knew what Qi’ra’s answer would be and she wasn’t so sure she could stand to hear it. “Must be nice being in charge. If you don’t mind the death count…”

“Don’t preach to me, Enfys Nest.” It was now Qi’ra who stepped closer towards her. Two steps, bringing her close enough that they could have touched if they both stretched out their hands. They didn’t, of course. Neither of them was the kind of woman who would.

Qi’ra looked beautiful, dressed in the riches befitting her new station with a fur cape around her shoulders and gloves of finest gundark leather. She was dressed sharper than ever in the most fashionable brands you could buy on Coruscant. Her hair remained perfect though the wind tugged at it.

Enfys smiled bitterly. “I’m not. Just reminding you that other people paid a high price for all the nice things you get to enjoy.”

“I paid a high price for them, too,” Qi’ra pointed out briskly.

Enfys wanted to argue, yet there was nothing she could have said to argue.

She remembered the cantina and how Qi’ra had felt under her, over her, their naked bodies intertwined. She had been full of passion then, full of heat.

Qi’ra lifted her chin slightly. “I’m not going to walk away,” she stated as matter-of-factly as if she had commented merely on the weather.

Enfys inhaled deeply to steady herself. Her hands balled into fists. “I expected as much.”

There would be no terms to discuss today; Enfys had known it, everyone had known it before they even met to discuss terms. Qi’ra was too new and contested in her position to be seen striking deals with their mortal enemies. Enfys couldn’t even hold it against her, she hadn’t shown any mercy either when she was consolidating her hold after her mother’s death.

She chose not to wonder if Qi’ra would have shown leniency if she could have afforded to, or if it was never anything but weakness in her eyes. She chose not to consider that if Qi’ra had chosen peace today, Enfys would still have been forced to choose war.

There was a stifled scream somewhere behind her, followed by an explosion – Enfys didn’t need to turn around to know it was coming from one of the rooftops, where her snipers had been positioned.

Like in response, battle cries came from Qi’ra’s side, where her own stealth troops were now rushing forward to attack the Crimson Dawn from behind. In the distance, there was the roar of swoop bikes.

Enfys placed her helmet back on her head right before the space between the two groups would be filled with blaster fire. Her eyes met Qi’ra’s for one more moment – she wasn’t even sure if Qi’ra could pinpoint where her eyes were beneath the mask, yet it felt like she was holding her gaze.

They joined the battle, united in the knowledge that some battles were simply not meant to be averted.


	3. Chapter 3

“We really have to stop meeting like this, Enfys.”

Sprawled on the ground at Qi’ra’s feet, Enfys snarled, then screamed when the bounty hunter’s shock stick hit her hard in the side, sending her to the floor first from brute force, then keeping her down from the agony of her entire body convulsing with electricity.

A heavy boot at the back of her neck kept her down when she tried to sit upright again. She snarled and spat and kept struggling by sheer force of her outrage even when the boot ground down harder. Feeble and ultimately pointless as her defiance was, defiance in itself would forever be its own reward to a true rebel. She could not bend, she could not break, least of all for some bounty hunter come to sell her out to the highest bidder.

Above her, Qi’ra tutted. “That’s enough now, Boba. You know I don’t pay full price for damaged goods.”

“If you don’t I’ll sell her directly to the Empire,” Fett said.

Enfys’s struggles stilled. Her head was still forced down, face pressed into the lush dark-green plush carpet of Qi’ra’s sitting room. The cuffs that kept her hand pinned behind her back suddenly felt twice as tight.

There was a ruffle of clothes as Qi’ra presumably stood up, then the click of heels as she stepped closer until she stepped onto the carpet and her footsteps were swallowed.

“That won’t be necessary,” she said. She was close. “Don’t forget who has been an ally to you, Fett. It would be a shame to lose our friendship over such…” Enfys couldn’t see her but by her tone of voice alone she could imagine the disdainful twist to Qi’ra’s perfectly painted lips, “…a trifle.”

The pressure against the back of her skull eased and Enfys could lift her head just far enough to make out Qi’ra’s feet, clad in a pair of undoubtedly expensive red high heels.

“I’m here, not at the Governor’s.”

“A wise choice,” Qi’ra noted, as blithely pleasant now as if she were chitchatting about the weather. She walked away, to a desk, and did something there which was followed by confirming beeps. “If you would like to check your account now.”

More beeping noises, closer this time. Enfys assumed that Fett was indeed checking and tried not to feel nervous. Tried not to dread the deal failing, tried not to feel the false sense of security of being sold to Qi’ra… as if she were any safer here, as if it wasn’t just deceptive familiarity and the memory of Qi’ra’s head buried between her legs.

“Pleasure making business with you.”

Qi’ra hummed her agreement and then there was nothing but silence as Boba left, heavy footsteps drawing ever farther away until the door to Qi’ra’s office swished shut behind him.

Enfys lifted her head. Clumsy as it was with her hands tied behind her back and her ankles chained together, she struggled into an upright kneeling position.

Qi’ra was indeed perfectly poised over by her desk, still wearing the expression of a woman ready for pleasant chitchat and not like one who had just bought her enemy to…

“What?” Enfys spat, baring her teeth at her. Her hair had long since fallen out of its braids, a curly red mess that fell into her face and got into her eyes and was just a general nuisance. She exhaled in a puff, but it did nothing but make her hair flutter and settle even more annoyingly back into place. “You going to kill me now or are you going to keep staring all day long? Take a holo, it’ll last longer.”

Qi’ra stalked towards her. It had to be Enfys’s imagination, it had to be, except she was certain there was a swap to Qi’ra’s hips. She grasped Enfys’s chin with a hand sporting perfectly painted nails and as she did so, the Crimson Dawn tattoo on her wrist fell exposed.

Enfys tried her best to spit at it.

Qi’ra’s lips tightened. She ran the fingers of her other hand over the bruises marring Enfys’s face. Her cold fingers felt infuriatingly pleasant on Enfys’s swollen skin. “He damaged you.”

“I didn’t want to come quietly.”

Qi’ra arched her brows. “Do you know how much it cost me to have Fett deliver you to me instead? I had to pay the Imperial bounty and half again.”

Deep inside Enfys, warmth bloomed, accompanied by the secret thrill of having been right to hope. She squashed it ruthlessly. “So much trouble just to kill me with your own hands.”

“I’m not planning to kill you.” Qi’ra’s nails dug into her jaw just as they had dug into her back the night they had shared above a seedy cantina. “I’m going to gift you to the Empire and win the Governor’s friendship. You are going to be one of my best investments.”

Every little bit of warmth that had flared in Enfys was snuffed out in one icy gale. She inhaled deeply and steeled her gaze. “I don’t fear death.”

This was much was true. It was not fear of death that made her stomach feel like it was filled with lead.

“Of course you don’t!” Qi’ra released her with a scoff. Scorn only made her look more resplendent in the bright red dress that was perfectly tailored to her curves. She wore a lot of red today. Maybe it had been meant to send a message but Enfys never cared much for messages which couldn’t be delivered with a blaster. “The likes of you pride themselves on a martyr’s death.”

“ _The likes of us_ would rather die standing than live kneeling,” Enfys hissed and wished Qi’ra hadn’t withdrawn her hand. It would have been so satisfying to sink her teeth into it.

“That’s funny, coming from a woman on her knees.”

Enfys spat and struggled, trying to get to her feet, a difficult task without help. Fueled by sudden blinding fury and the overwhelming sense of betrayal still choking her, she kept trying anyway.

Qi’ra took a step away and watched dispassionately.

“You know, there was a moment…” She grunted in satisfaction as she finally managed to lift herself to her feet, finally didn’t have to look up to Qi’ra anymore like she was a supplicant begging for mercy. “There was a moment,” she started again, “when I thought you weren’t half bad.”

Qi’ra’s lips twisted again, much as they had when she called Enfys a trifle. “There was a time when I thought you could be more than a reckless dreamer who would get everyone who followed you killed. Turns out we were both wrong.”

Enfys licked her swollen lips. When she tried very hard at night, she could still recall how Qi’ra had tasted. A thousand angry words were bubbling up in her, just begging to be released, yet she couldn’t think of a single thing that wouldn’t reveal far too much by its bitterness.

Qi’ra studied her, patiently at first, then with growing impatience at Enfys’s seeming disregard for her and the truly terrible circumstances she found herself in.

It took a lot out of Enfys not to laugh.  It would have come out nothing but bitter, too.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” she demanded. There was a pleading undertone to her voice, or maybe that was Enfys’s imagination. Wishful thinking, perhaps. She’d always liked to believe that she got just as much to Qi’ra as Qi’ra got to her.

Enfys took her time to think about Qi’ra’s question, both because this question deserved thought and because it was bound to infuriate her further. “No,” she finally said, chin lifting up a little farther in her defiance. “You’ve made up your mind. There’s nothing left to do but beg for mercy, and I won’t beg.”

“Then you’re a fool.” There was that scoff again, the disdain. “Sometimes you’ve got to do whatever it takes to survive. You beg, you prostrate yourself, you cater to the vanity of people more powerful than you.” She clenched her teeth as she took a step towards Enfys again. “It wounds your pride, but _you survive_. Pride can be regained another day.”

Enfys shrugged as good as she could with her hands tied so tightly behind her back. “See, that’s the difference between us. I’d rather die than sell out.”

“And you will!” There was suddenly a hand in her hair, yanking her forward so that she stumbled, barely avoided falling right into Qi’ra more by sheer luck than grace. “You will die for your pride. The Empire doesn’t reward proud fools.”

“Unless they wear their uniform,” Enfys sneered right back. “They’re nothing but proud fools and we’ll tear them down.” She licked her lips. Qi’ra was so close again, she could see every fleck of color in her eyes. “We’ll tear you down, too. Crimson Dawn’s an infection, and we will cure the galaxy of it.” She laughed harshly, finally letting all that bitterness ring in her voice. “You can kill me but we’re everywhere. We took these coaxium credits and used them well. There are cells like the Cloud-Riders in a dozen systems and they’re all ready to fight you.” She tried to shake her head and laughed again. “You’ve already lost, Qi’ra.”

The grip on her hair tightened. “You think it’ll make a difference to us if it’s called Empire or Republic? Syndicates have always existed. Black Sun was at its strongest in the days of the Republic. Your rebel friends will take our bribes just like the Imperials do.”

“Then I’ll fight them, too!”

They were locked in a glare, caught at a standstill.

Enfys could hear her own breath come in far too loud gasps, she could hear Qi’ra breath. Could feel it tickle her own face.

Qi’ra was beautiful in her raw determination to bend fate to her will, Enfys didn’t think she could ever grow tired of the sight. If she hadn’t chosen to fight the wrong war she would have been truly magnificent.

If she hadn’t chosen to fight the wrong war, Enfys would have liked to kiss her now.

She would never know if Qi’ra had had the same thought or simply grown tired of their standstill, but suddenly Qi’ra’s lips were smashing into her own.

Her kiss was just as fierce as it had been that day in the cantina.

Enfys growled into their kiss and wished that her hands were free, for she would have liked to tear these perfectly tailored clothes from Qi’ra’s body. But all she got was a kiss, deep and demanding and far from enough. It burned through her, heat settling between her legs and making her squirm against thin air as she felt herself grow wet. And Qi’ra still wasn’t touching her except for that damned hand in her hair.

There was a buzzing from the desk, followed by a feminine voice saying, “Ma’am, the Governor is here to see you. Shall I send him up?”

Enfys felt like she was being drenched with a bucket of ice water.

Qi’ra looked exactly as shaken as she felt, standing there frozen in picturesque disheveled no-longer perfection.

Enfys licked her lips.

Qi’ra took a deep breath. She turned around, leaving Enfys only with the sight of her ramrod-straight back.

 The silence stretched between them.

“Ma’am?” the voice came through the speaker again, slightly concerned now.

It was as if a button had been pushed. Qi’ra snapped back into motion, her movements fluid and controlled as she walked to her desk, her voice perfectly calm when she said, “tell him to deploy his Stormtroopers escort, they are to help my men search for the prisoner. There has been an altercation and Nest has escaped.”

Enfys waited, not daring to so much as breathe.

A staticky confirmation, then Qi’ra’s eyes were on her again. Her face still looked pleasantly blank but this time Enfys couldn’t see it for anything but the mask it was. “Make sure you run fast. My guards will shoot to kill.”

Even if she hadn’t still been shackled, Enfys didn’t think she would have been able to budge. “Why?”

Qi’ra didn’t reply. She hit some more buttons and Enfys’s cuffs deactivated in response. They fell to the floor with two dull thuds.

When Enfys remained frozen, Qi’ra’s lips thinned. “Run.”

She caught the small blaster thrown her way by sheer instinct, and her rigor finally broken, she made for the air vent at the far end of the room which should be just large enough to fit her.

As she heaved herself into the vent, she heard Qi’ra on the comm again, giving orders to put the compound on lockdown, giving the order to kill.

Enfys still wanted to stay and demand an answer. But she had to climb and crawl, had to get out of the vents before Qi’ra inevitably had them flooded with poison.

In an abandoned hallway she slipped out of the vents and got into a cargo elevator, then stopped it two floors above, to pry loose the ceiling and climb into the elevator shaft. Even here, she heard the alarms blaring. Even then, she still wished to return and demand that answer.

She knew it would haunt her if she made it out of here. She knew she would lay awake at night and wonder, and feel one more of Qi’ra’s kisses burned into her.

And through it all, Enfys knew with all her heart that Qi’ra would never give her the answer she most longed to hear.


End file.
